Cotopaxi Trip

After nearly two months of staring at the beautiful Cotopaxi from my bedroom window, I finally got the chance to travel there with my class last weekend! Admittedly, I didn’t have the best attitude at first after getting home at 2:00 AM from a night out with my host sister, knowing that I would have to climb a mountain at 6:00 AM; but after sleeping on the bus and waking up in the most spectacular place on earth, my mood improved rapidly. Cotopaxi is one of the most active volcanoes in Ecuador, which is saying something because there are MANY active volcanoes in this country. It also has the potential to do quite a lot of damage if and when it decides to erupt. Just being there was absolutely incredible, but the hour hike we took to a glacier was definitely the highlight for me.

After Cotopaxi, our group of nearly 80 students hopped on buses to escape the hail that had begun to fall and made our way south to Baños where we spent the night. Katie, another Madison, Wisconsin girl (of course), was my roommate. After settling in, a bunch of us went out for dinner at a restaurant owned by Oregonians called “Casa Hood” before dancing in our favorite Baños bar. The place has a dead stuffed bird hanging from the ceiling and plays the best mix of Hip-Hop and Reggaeton around! On Sunday, we mostly discussed the threat of the volcano Tungurahua to the city of Baños and the damage it’s caused in the past. The picture below represents one of the most moving moments during my time here. While our professor, Theo, was showing us the damage caused by a recent volcanic mudslide (lahar), an old man from Baños stopped along the road to tell us about how it had destroyed several crops and many homes. Later, Theo explained that while living in Baños permanently is extremely dangerous because of the constant volcanic activity, the people there refuse to leave because the tourist industry is too strong and it’s been their home for centuries. The old man wandered off and only paused for a few seconds while staring over the tremendous landscape; a place of both unimaginable beauty and pain. That’s all I have for today. As mentioned in the last entry, I haven’t been sleeping much of late, and need to build up energy for my jungle rafting trip this coming Saturday. ¡Caio! 

P.S. Shout out to Tyler (TT), who I hear is finally home from his world travels! I hope you’re doing well in Eugene and that you can still visit me at some point!

Wandering around Guayaquil (and Ecuador in general)

I am officially sick of bread! I don’t know how it happened (didn´t even know that it was possible), but I woke up this morning and immediately decided that just one more empanada, croissant or baguette would surely be the end of me. My carbohydrate intake in general has been pretty excessive of late. Therefore, my new goal is to limit myself to only one galleta grande (huge cookie) next week, instead of the usual four or five! Regarding my weekend: while it didn’t turn out exactly as planned, we (Julie and I) at least got an adventure out of it, and definitely covered an impressive distance considering the short amount of time we had for the trip. On Thursday, we departed from Quito at around 10:30 PM and attempted (with great difficulty) to sleep during the eight-hour bus ride to Guayaquil, the largest city in Ecuador, which is near the coast.We spent forever trying to find a comfortable position that would also enable us to take full advantage of the beach towels we were using as blankets. Fortunately, it eventually worked out and we got barely enough rest to carry us through the next day. At 6:30 AM, we arrived in Guayaquil, checked into a hotel downtown, and spent the rest of the day walking around the city, taking pictures and searching for suitable places to eat that also had a vegetarian option because Julie is a vegetarian (like the majority of my closest friends so it seems). We forgot (of course) that because it was a holiday, almost everything was closed during the day. Despite this minor setback, the walk was beautiful. We first ventured to Parque Bolívar to observe the many turtles that swim in the ponds and the many (MANY) iguanas that apparently find great enjoyment in relieving themselves onto the heads of unsuspecting tourists from their refuge in the trees above. Our next stop was the Malecón, a newly revived boardwalk, known for its monuments, painters, music and restaurants. The thing that we found most exciting, however, was the promotion of recycling (as shown below)!

I’ll admit that we received a few strange looks from locals when taking pictures of trash bins, but it was absolutely worth it (our friends in Quito wouldn’t have believed it otherwise). My favorite part of Guayaquil was a neighborhood called Las Peñas, where I took the majority of my photos.

From a distance, it looks like the hills of San Francisco, but the community itself is exceptionally old with some 500 stairs leading to a tremendous view of the city. Unfortunately, after all the walking (from roughly 8:00 AM to 8:00 PM), we were too tired to enjoy the celebrations that night; and after an early dinner on the Malecón, we called it a night at only 9:00 PM. Saturday was a little strange because although we’d been planning to go to the coast, the news of protests and strikes along the road there prompted us to head four hours in the other direction to a town called Riobamba in the highlands. We chose this destination for two reasons in particular: first, it's much closer to Quito (which meant less driving the following day); and second, we love the way Riobamba sounds when said fast by conductors who try to get us to go there every weekend. It was nice to switch from a bustling city to una ciudad más tranquilo. We wandered through the Saturday market, got a $1.50 manicure down the street from our amazing hostel, Oasis, and later sat down at a pizzeria to watch the soccer game between Venezuela and Ecuador, which Ecuador sadly lost. Overall, the weekend was really fun, but I always love coming home to Quito and sleeping in my own bed (not that I’ve slept a lot in the past few days). Today I had two midterms for Social Problems in Ecuador and Volcanology and tomorrow I have to go to school early again to work on a group project. Hopefully I’ll make it home in time to steal a few hours of sleep before my Salsa dancing lesson with Pao at 8:00! ¡Hasta lluego!

Nothing special... but I love Quito

Another uneventful weekend/week gone by, but I definitely got some much-needed R & R! The majority of the time, I just chilled around the apartment, napped, worked on homework or got bread from la panadería across the street (to break from bouts of boredom). On Saturday, Julie and I did a little more exploring around the historical district, where we toured two churches and then took the trolleybus to a park nearby to view some art and check out the Saturday market there. Monday consisted of laundry, memorization of some 200 Spanish phrases and my first Salsa dancing lesson with my host-sister Paola (Pao)! I love Salsa! Pao is a great teacher and she also burned me a mix of songs so I can practice in my room. Yesterday and today have been pretty stressful because I have two midterms tomorrow and a few more next week as well. Thankfully, there’s no school on Friday because it’s Guayaquil day; so Julie and I (and possibly our other friend Quena) are heading down to Guayaquil for a little sun, and to join in on the festivities! I’m sure that’ll make for a more interesting post next week. For now, I’m off to study and later I have my second Salsa lesson with Pao. ¡Que pasa bien!

¡Lost in Quito and Fútbol Fever!

It’s 7:00 PM on Tuesday and I just walked in the door after a long day of class and confusion. Although last weekend wasn’t quite as exciting compared to Baños and Otavalo, I did travel to Laguna de Cuicocha (very similar to Crater Lake in Oregon) with my volcano class. Cuicocha is close to Otavalo, so we spent a long time on the bus, but it was worth it! The lake was absolutely beautiful! Sadly, I neglected to bring my camera on the trip because I didn’t know what Theo (the professor) had in store for us; so the picture below is of the free postcard we received upon our arrival. 

I spent the rest of the weekend writing papers and memorizing words for my conversation class. In between, however, I found the time to take a walk with Angela (to listen to all of her crazy adventures) and to buy season six of “Sex and the City” and “City of God” (the movie). DVDs here are insanely cheap. It only costs two dollars for almost any movie (well, probably pirated ones) and some of them aren’t even in the theaters yet. I also bought a mixed CD of the best reggae songs in 2007, which was only a dollar. If buying random CDs and DVDs doesn´t kill my budget, my new obsession with Ecuador soccer could definitely put my spending over the top! I went to my first fútbol game in Quito last Wednesday between Nacional and Liga (the two biggest club teams in Quito). Because I’d wanted to buy a jersey for a long time, Sam and I decided we were going to be Liga fans about an hour before the game and picked up a couple of jerseys from El Jardín (the mall near my apartment). The game itself was amazing! We (about seven of us from Oregon) got seats right by the crazy fans who were shouting curses, banging drums and throwing toilet paper on to the field. It was great fun to watch the game while eating delicious hotdogs, joining in on the chants that we didn’t understand and marveling at how close the planes overhead would come to the field as they landed at the airport nearby. Liga won 2-0 (of course) and then we stuck around for a little bit to watch the next game between Barcelona (the most hated team in Quito from Guayaquil) and some other team. It was hilarious to see Nacional and Liga fans go from screaming at each other to turning on Barcelona as the team entered the stadium. In addition to club games, there are some really exciting matches coming up later this month between Ecuador and Venezuela and Ecuador and Mexico. Hopefully I’ll be able to go, but Julie and I are thinking about heading to the coast in a couple of weeks, so we’ll see what happens. The picture of the barbed-wire fence, by the way, is the only thing separating Liga and Nacional fans.

Returning to my confusion(mentioned at the start of this blog post),Today went pretty smoothly until Sam and I tried to get back to Quito from USFQ, and got on the wrong bus. Eventually, we were dropped off in the middle of nowhere on the side of a freeway and had to find our way back to the city on two more buses that literally went just about everywhere possible in Quito before finally dropping us off somewhat close to our homes two hours later.Since I wasn’t in a hurry, it was funny more than anything, but I definitely learned my lesson! I also cheered myself up by stopping for juice at my favorite fruit-stand. It’s a little store about a half-mile from my house in which I can sit down, pick out any combination of fruits that my heart desires (today I got fresh-squeezed orange juice, blackberries and bananas) and watch as they blend it right in front of me for only 50 cents! I love it and look forward to it every day now. 

I should probably get some rest because tomorrow I've agreed to sit at 

a booth for three hours and convince Ecuadorians to study at UO. Apparently the program is in trouble because too many students leave Oregon to study at USFQ, while not enough Ecuadorians go to UO. I’ll do my best to represent Los Patos (The Ducks)! I also am going to talk with my Social Problems in Ecuador professor tomorrow about places to volunteer. The final photos are of my friends Quena, Michelle and me at the Chiva (many moons ago), and a street in the historical district (I thought I’d throw them in the mix just for fun). ¡Adiós! ¡Que te vaya bien!